OTTOMAN PORTE
It had been promised to Buonaparte, that the abilities of Talleyrand, as minister of foreign affairs, should be employed to reconcile the Grand Signior and his counsellors to the occupation of Egypt.395 But the efforts of that able negotiator had totally failed in a case so evidently hopeless; and if Talleyrand had even proceeded to Constantinople, as Napoleon alleged the Directory had promised, it could only have been to be confined in the Seven Towers. The Porte had long since declared, that any attack upon Egypt, the road to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, would be considered as a declaration of war, whatever pretexts might be alleged. They regarded, therefore, Buonaparte's invasion as an injury equally unprovoked and unjustifiable. They declared war against France, called upon every follower of the Prophet to take the part of his vicegerent upon earth, collected forces, and threatened an immediate expedition, for the purpose of expelling the infidels from Egypt. The success of the British at Aboukir increased their confidence. Nelson was loaded with every mark of honour which the Sultan could bestow, and the most active preparations were made to act against Buonaparte, equally considered as enemy to the Porte, whether he professed himself Christian, infidel, or renegade.
Meantime, that adventurous and active chief was busied in augmenting his means of defence or conquest, and in acquiring the information necessary to protect what he had gained, and to extend his dominions. For the former purpose, corps were raised from among the Egyptians, and some were mounted upon dromedaries, the better to encounter the perils of the desert. For the latter, Buonaparte undertook a journey to the Isthmus of Suez, the well-known interval which connects Asia with Africa. He subscribed the charter, or protection, granted to the Maronite Monks of Sinai, with the greater pleasure, that the signature of Mahomet had already sanctioned that ancient document. He visited the celebrated fountains of Moses, and, misled by a guide, had nearly been drowned in the advancing tides of the Red Sea.396 This, he observes, would have furnished a splendid text to all the preachers in Europe.397 But the same Deity, who had rendered the gulf fatal to Pharaoh, had reserved for one, who equally defied and disowned his power, the rocks of an island in the midst of the Atlantic.
Feb. 17
When Napoleon was engaged in this expedition, or speedily on his return, he learned that two Turkish armies had assembled, one at Rhodes, and the other in Syria, with the purpose of recovering Egypt. The daring genius, which always desired to anticipate the attempts of the enemy, determined him to march with a strong force for the occupation of Syria, and thus at once to alarm the Turks by the progress which he expected to make in that province, and to avoid being attacked in Egypt by two Turkish armies at the same time. His commencement was as successful as his enterprise was daring. A body of Mamelukes was dispersed by a night attack. The fort of El Arish, considered as one of the keys of Egypt, fell easily into his hands. Finally, at the head of about ten thousand men, he traversed the desert, so famous in biblical history, which separates Africa from Asia, and entered Palestine without much loss, but not without experiencing the privations to which the wanderers in those sandy wastes have been uniformly subjected. While the soldiers looked with fear on the howling wilderness which they saw around,398 there was something in the extent and loneliness of the scene that corresponded with the swelling soul of Napoleon, and accommodated itself to his ideas of immense and boundless space. He was pleased with the flattery, which derived his Christian name from two Greek words, signifying the Lion of the Desert.
MASSACRE OF JAFFA
Upon his entering the Holy Land, Buonaparte again drove before him a body of the Mamelukes, belonging to those who, after the battles of the Pyramids and of Salahieh, had retreated into Syria; and his army occupied without resistance Gaza, anciently a city of the Philistines, in which they found supplies of provisions. Jaffa, a celebrated city during the time of the Crusades, was the next object of attack. It was bravely assaulted, and fiercely defended. But the French valour and discipline prevailed – the place was carried by storm – three thousand Turks were put to the sword, and the town was abandoned to the license of the soldiery, which, by Buonaparte's own admission, never assumed a shape more frightful.399 Such, it may be said, is the stern rule of war; and if so, most of our readers will acquiesce in the natural exclamation of the Maréchal de Montluc, "Certes, we soldiers stand in more need of the Divine mercy than other men, seeing that our profession compels us to command and to witness deeds of such cruelty." It was not, however, to the ordinary horrors attending the storm of a town, that the charge against Buonaparte is on this occasion limited. He is accused of having been guilty of an action of great injustice, as well as of especial barbarity. Concerning this we shall endeavour to state, stripped of colouring and exaggeration, first the charge, and then the reply, of Napoleon himself.
After the breach had been stormed, a large part of the garrison, estimated by Buonaparte himself at twelve hundred men, which Miot400 raises to betwixt two and three thousand, and others exaggerate still more, remained on the defensive, and held out in the mosques, and a sort of citadel to which they had retreated, till, at length, despairing of succour, they surrendered their arms, and were in appearance admitted to quarter. Of this body, the Egyptians were carefully separated from the Turks, Maugrabins, and Arnaouts; and while the first were restored to liberty, and sent back to their country, these last were placed under a strong guard. Provisions were distributed to them, and they were permitted to go by detachments in quest of water. According to all appearance they were considered and treated as prisoners of war. This was on the 7th of March. On the 9th, two days afterwards, this body of prisoners were marched out of Jaffa, in the centre of a large square battalion, commanded by General Bon. Miot assures us, that he himself mounted his horse, accompanied the melancholy column, and witnessed the event. The Turks foresaw their fate, but used neither entreaties nor complaints to avert it. They marched on, silent and composed. Some of them, of higher rank, seemed to exhort the others to submit, like servants of the Prophet, to the decree, which, according to their belief, was written on their forehead. They were escorted to the sand-hills to the south east of Jaffa, divided there into small bodies, and put to death by musketry. The execution lasted a considerable time, and the wounded, as in the fusillades of the Revolution, were despatched with the bayonet. Their bodies were heaped together, and formed a pyramid which is still visible, consisting now of human bones as originally of bloody corpses.
The cruelty of this execution occasioned the fact itself to be doubted, though coming with strong evidence, and never denied by the French themselves. Napoleon, however, frankly admitted the truth of the statement both to Lord Ebrington and to Dr. O'Meara.401 Well might the author of this cruelty write to the Directory, that the storming of Jaffa was marked by horrors which he had never elsewhere witnessed. Buonaparte's defence was, that the massacre was justified by the laws of war – that the head of his messenger had been cut off by the governor of Jaffa, when sent to summon him to surrender – that these Turks were a part of the garrison of El Arish, who had engaged not to serve against the French, and were found immediately afterwards defending Jaffa, in breach of the terms of their capitulation. They had incurred the doom of death, therefore, by the rules of war – Wellington, he said, would have, in his place, acted in the same manner.
To this plea the following obvious answers apply. If the Turkish governor had behaved like a barbarian, for which his country, and the religion which Napoleon meditated to embrace, might be some excuse, the French general had avenged himself by the storm and plunder of the town, with which his revenge ought, in all reason, to have been satisfied. If some of these unhappy Turks had broken their faith to Buonaparte, and were found again in the ranks which they had sworn to abandon, it could not, according to the most severe construction of the rules of war, authorise the dreadful retaliation of indiscriminate massacre upon a multitude of prisoners, without inquiring whether they had been all equally guilty. Lastly, and admitting them all to stand in the same degree of criminality, although their breach of faith might have entitled Buonaparte to refuse these men quarter while they had arms in their hands, that right was ended when the French general received their submission, and when they had given up the mean of defence, on condition of safety for life at least.402
This bloody deed must always remain a deep stain on the character of Napoleon. Yet we do not view it as the indulgence of an innate love of cruelty; for nothing in Buonaparte's history shows the existence of that vice, and there are many things which intimate his disposition to have been naturally humane. But he was ambitious, aimed at immense and gigantic undertakings, and easily learned to overlook the waste of human life, which the execution of his projects necessarily involved. He seems to have argued, not on the character of the action, but solely on the effect which it was to produce upon his own combinations. His army was small; it was his business to strike terror into his numerous enemies, and the measure to be adopted seemed capable of making a deep impression on all who should hear of it. Besides, these men, if dismissed, would immediately rejoin his enemies. He had experienced their courage, and to disarm them would have been almost an unavailing precaution, where their national weapon, the sabre, was so easily attained. To detain them prisoners would have required a stronger force than Napoleon could afford, would have added difficulty and delay to the movement of his troops, and tended to exhaust his supplies. That sort of necessity, therefore, which men fancy to themselves when they are unwilling to forego a favourite object for the sake of obeying a moral precept – that necessity which might be more properly termed a temptation difficult to be resisted – that necessity which has been called the tyrant's plea, was the cause of the massacre at Jaffa, and must remain its sole apology.
It might almost seem that Heaven set its vindictive brand upon this deed of butchery; for about the time it was committed the plague broke out in the army. Buonaparte, with a moral courage deserving as much praise as his late cruelty deserved reprobation, went into the hospitals in person, and while exposing himself, without hesitation, to the infection, diminished the terror of the disease in the opinion of the soldiers generally, and even of the patients themselves, who were thus enabled to keep up their spirits, and gained by doing so the fairest chance of recovery.403
SAINT JEAN D'ACRE
Meanwhile, determined to prosecute the conquest of Syria, Buonaparte resolved to advance to Saint Jean d'Acre so celebrated in the wars of Palestine. The Turkish Pacha, or governor of Syria, who, like others in his situation, accounted himself almost an independent sovereign, was Achmet; who, by his unrelenting cruelties and executions, had procured the terrible distinction of Djezzar, or the Butcher. Buonaparte addressed this formidable chief in two letters, offering his alliance, and threatening him with his vengeance if it should be rejected.404 To neither did the pacha return any answer; in the second instance he put to death the messenger. The French general advanced against Acre, vowing revenge. There were, however, obstacles to the success of his enterprise, on which he had not calculated.
The pacha had communicated the approach of Napoleon to Sir Sidney Smith, to whom had been committed the charge of assisting the Turks in their proposed expedition to Egypt, and who, for that purpose, was cruising in the Levant. He hastened to sail for Acre with the Tigre and Theseus, ships of the line; and arriving there two days ere the French made their appearance, contributed greatly to place the town, the fortifications of which were on the old Gothic plan, in a respectable state of defence.
Sir Sidney Smith, who so highly distinguished himself on this occasion, had been long celebrated for the most intrepid courage, and spirit of enterprise. His character was, besides, marked by those traits of enthusiasm at which cold and vulgar minds are apt to sneer, because incapable of understanding them; yet without which great and honourable actions have rarely been achieved. He had also a talent, uncommon among the English, that of acting easily with foreign, and especially with barbarous troops, and understanding how to make their efforts availing for the service of the common cause, though exerted in a manner different from those of civilized nations. This brave officer having been frequently intrusted with the charge of alarming the French coast, had been taken on one occasion, and, contrary to the laws of nations, and out of a mean spirit of revenge, was imprisoned in the Temple, from which he was delivered by a daring stratagem, effected by the French Royalist party. He had not been many hours at Acre, when Providence afforded him a distinguished mark of favour. The Theseus, which had been detached to intercept any French vessels that might be attending on Buonaparte's march, detected a small flotilla stealing under Mount Carmel, and had the good fortune to make prize of seven out of nine of them. They were a convoy from Damietta, bound for Acre, having on board heavy cannon, platforms, ammunition, and other necessary articles. These cannon and military stores, destined to form the siege of Acre, became eminently useful in its defence, and the consequence of their capture was eventually decisive of the struggle. General Philippeaux, a French royalist, and officer of engineers, immediately applied himself to place the cannon thus acquired, to the amount of betwixt thirty and forty, upon the walls which they had been intended to destroy. This officer, who had been Buonaparte's school-fellow, and the principal agent in delivering Sir Sidney Smith from prison, possessed rare talents in his profession. Thus strangely met under the walls of Acre, an English officer, late a prisoner in the Temple of Paris, and a French colonel of engineers, with the late general of the army of Italy, the ancient companion of Philippeaux,405 and about to become almost the personal enemy of Smith.
SIEGE OF ACRE
On the 17th March, the French came in sight of Acre, which is built on a peninsula advancing into the sea, and so conveniently situated that vessels can lie near the shore, and annoy with their fire whatever advances to assault the fortification. Notwithstanding the presence of two British ships of war, and the disappointment concerning his battering cannon, which were now pointed against him from the ramparts, Buonaparte, with a characteristic perseverance, which, on such an occasion, was pushed into obstinacy, refused to abandon his purpose, and proceeded to open trenches, although the guns which he had to place in them were only twelve pounders. The point of attack was a large tower which predominated over the rest of the fortifications. A mine at the same time was run under the extreme defences.
By the 28th March a breach was effected, the mine was sprung, and the French proceeded to the assault upon that day. They advanced at the charging step, under a murderous fire from the walls, but had the mortification to find a deep ditch betwixt them and the tower. They crossed it, nevertheless, by help of the scaling-ladders which they carried with them, and forced their way as far as the tower, from which it is said that the defenders, impressed by the fate of Jaffa, were beginning to fly. They were checked by the example of Djezzar himself, who fired his own pistols at the French, and upbraided the Moslems who were retreating from the walls. The defences were again manned; the French, unable to support the renewed fire, were checked and forced back; and the Turks falling upon them in their retreat with sabre in hand, killed a number of their best men, and Mailly, who commanded the party. Sorties were made from the place to destroy the French works; and although the cries with which the Turks carry on their military manœuvres gave the alarm to the enemy, yet, assisted by a detachment of British seamen, they did the French considerable damage, reconnoitred the mine which they were forming anew, and obtained the knowledge of its direction necessary to prepare a counter-mine.
While the strife was thus fiercely maintained on both sides, with mutual loss and increased animosity, the besiegers were threatened with other dangers. An army of Moslem troops of various nations, but all actuated by the same religious zeal, had formed themselves in the mountains of Samaria, and uniting with them the warlike inhabitants of that country, now called Naplous, formed the plan of attacking the French army lying before Acre on one side, while Djezzar and his allies should assail them upon the other. Kleber, with his division, was despatched by Buonaparte to disperse this assemblage. But though he obtained considerable advantages over detached parties of the Syrian army, their strength was so disproportioned, that at last, while he held a position near Mount Tabor, with two or three thousand men, he was surrounded by about ten times his own number. But his general-in-chief was hastening to his assistance. Buonaparte left two divisions to keep the trenches before Acre, and penetrated into the country in three columns. Murat, at the head of a fourth, occupied the pass called Jacob's Bridge. The attack, made on various points, was every where successful. The camp of the Syrian army was taken; their defeat, almost their dispersion, was accomplished, while their scattered remains fled to Damascus. Buonaparte returned, crowned with laurels, to the siege of Acre.
Here, too, the arrival of thirty heavy pieces of cannon from Jaffa seemed to promise that success, which the French had as yet been unable to attain. It was about this time that, walking on the Mount which still retains the name of Richard Cœur de Lion, Buonaparte expressed himself to Murat in these terms, as he pointed to Saint Jean D'Acre: – "The fate of the East depends upon yonder petty town. Its conquest will ensure the main object of my expedition, and Damascus will be the first fruit of it."406 Thus it would seem, that, while engaged in the enterprise, Buonaparte held the same language, which he did many years after its failure when at St. Helena.
Repeated and desperate assaults proved, that the consequence which he attached to taking Acre was as great as his words expressed. The assailants suffered severely on these occasions, for they were exposed to the fire of two ravelins, or external fortifications, which had been constructed under Philippeaux's directions, and at the same time enfiladed by the fire of the British shipping. At length, employing to the uttermost the heavy artillery now in his possession, Buonaparte, in spite of a bloody and obstinate opposition, forced his way to the disputed tower, and made a lodgment on the second story. It afforded, however, no access to the town; and the troops remained there as in a cul-de-sac, the lodgment being covered from the English and Turkish fire by a work constructed partly of packs of cotton, partly of the dead bodies of the slain, built up along with them.
At this critical moment, a fleet, bearing reinforcements long hoped for and much needed, appeared in view of the garrison. They contained Turkish troops under the command of Hassan Bey. Yet near as they were, the danger was imminent that Acre might be taken ere they could land. To prevent such a misfortune, Sir Sidney Smith in person proceeded to the disputed tower, at the head of a body of British seamen, armed with pikes. They united themselves to a corps of brave Turks, who defended the breach rather with heavy stones than with other weapons. The heap of ruins which divided the contending parties served as a breast-work to both. The muzzles of the muskets touched each other, and the spear-heads of the standards were locked together. At this moment one of the Turkish regiments of Hassan's army, which had by this time landed, made a sortie upon the French; and though they were driven back, yet the diversion occasioned the besiegers to be forced from their lodgment.
Abandoning the ill-omened tower, which had cost the besiegers so many men, Buonaparte now turned his efforts towards a considerable breach that had been effected in the curtain, and which promised a more easy entrance. It proved, indeed, but too easy; for Djezzar Pacha opposed to the assault on this occasion a new mode of tactics. Confiding in his superior numbers, he suffered the French, who were commanded by the intrepid General Lannes, to surmount the breach without opposition, by which they penetrated into the body of the place. They had no sooner entered, than a numerous body of Turks mingled among them with loud shouts; and ere they had time or room to avail themselves of their discipline, brought them into that state of close fighting, where strength and agility are superior to every other acquirement. The Turks, wielding the sabre in one hand, and the poniard in the other, cut to pieces almost all the French who had entered. General Rambaud lay a headless corpse in the breach – Lannes was with difficulty brought off severely wounded. The Turks gave no quarter; and instantly cutting the heads off of those whom they slew, carried them to the pacha, who sat in public distributing money to those who brought him these bloody trophies, which now lay piled in heaps around him. This was the sixth assault upon these tottering and blood-stained ramparts. "Victory," said Napoleon, "is to the most persevering;"407 and contrary to the advice of Kleber, he resolved upon another and yet more desperate attack.
On the 21st May the final effort was made. The attack of the morning failed, and Colonel Veneux renewed it at mid-day. "Be assured," said he to Buonaparte, "Acre shall be yours to-night, or Veneux will die on the breach."408 He kept his word at the cost of his life. Bon was also slain, whose division had been the executioners of the garrison of Jaffa. The French now retreated, dispirited and despairing of success. The contest had been carried on at half a musket shot distance; and the bodies of the dead lying around, putrified under the burning sun, spread disease among the survivors. An attempt was made to establish a suspension of arms for removing this horrible annoyance. Miot says that the pacha returned no answer to the proposal of the French. According to Sir Sidney Smith's official reports, the armistice for this humane purpose was actually agreed on, but broken off by the French firing upon those who were engaged in the melancholy office, and then rushing on to make their last unsuccessful charge and assault upon the breach. This would have been a crime so useless, and would have tended so much to the inconvenience of the French themselves, that we cannot help suspecting some misunderstanding had occurred, and that the interruption was under a wrong conception of the purpose of the working party.
This is the more probable, as Sir Sidney Smith, who reports the circumstance, was not at this time disposed to put the best construction on any action of Buonaparte's, who, on the other hand, regarded the British seamen with peculiar dislike, and even malignity. The cause of personal quarrel betwixt them was rather singular.
Buonaparte had addressed the subjects of Achmet Djezzar's pachalik, in terms inviting them to revolt, and join the French; yet was much offended when, imitating his own policy, the pacha and Sir Sidney Smith caused letters to be sent into his camp before Acre, urging his soldiers to mutiny and desertion. Sir Sidney also published a proclamation to the Druses, and other inhabitants of the country, calling on them to trust the faith of a Christian knight, rather than that of an unprincipled renegado. Nettled at these insults, Buonaparte declared that the English commodore was mad; and, according to his account, Sir Sidney replied by sending him a challenge. The French general scornfully refused this invitation, unless the challenger would bring Marlborough to meet him, but offered to send one of his grenadiers to indulge the Englishman's desire of single combat. The good taste of the challenge may be doubted, if indeed such was ever sent; but the scorn of the reply ought to have been mitigated, considering it was addressed to one, in consequence of whose dauntless and determined opposition Buonaparte's favourite object had failed, and who was presently to compel him, for the first time, to an inglorious retreat.
Another calumny, circulated by Buonaparte against the English commodore, was, that Sir Sidney Smith had endeavoured to expose his French prisoners to the infection of the plague, by placing them in vessels where that dreadful contagion prevailed. This charge had no other foundation, than in Buonaparte's wish, by spreading such a scandal, to break off all communication between the commodore and the discontented of his own army. After the heat excited by their angry collision had long subsided, it is amusing to find Napoleon, when in the island of Saint Helena, declaring, that his opinion of Sir Sidney Smith was altered for the better, since he had become acquainted with the rest of his countrymen, and that he now considered him as a worthy sort of man – for an Englishman.
THE SIEGE OF ACRE RAISED
The siege of Acre had now continued sixty days since the opening of the trenches. The besiegers had marched no less than eight times to the assault, while eleven desperate sallies were evidence of the obstinacy of the defence. Several of the best French generals were killed; among the rest Caffarelli,409 for whom Buonaparte had particular esteem; and the army was greatly reduced by the sword and the plague, which raged at once among their devoted bands. Retreat became inevitable. Yet Buonaparte endeavoured to give it such a colouring as might make the measure seem voluntary. Sometimes he announced that his purpose of going to Acre was sufficiently accomplished when he had battered down the palace of the pacha; at other times he affirmed he had left the whole town a heap of ruins; and finally, he informed the Directory that he could easily have taken the place, but the plague being raging within its walls, and it being impossible to prevent the troops from seizing on infected clothes for part of their booty, he had rather declined the capture of Acre, than run the risk of introducing this horrid malady among his soldiers. What his real feelings must have been, while covering his chagrin with such flimsy pretexts, may be conjectured from the following frank avowal to his attendants in Saint Helena. Speaking of the dependence of the most important affairs on the most trivial, he remarks, that the mistake of the captain of a frigate, who bore away, instead of forcing his passage to the place of his destination, had prevented the face of the world from being totally changed. "Acre," he said, "would otherwise have been taken – the French army would have flown to Damascus and Aleppo – in a twinkling of an eye they would have been on the Euphrates – the Syrian Christians would have joined us – the Druses, the Armenians would have united with us." – Some one replied, "We might have been reinforced to the number of a hundred thousand men." – "Say six hundred thousand," said the Emperor; "who can calculate the amount? I would have reached Constantinople and the Indies – I would have changed the face of the world."410